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The elites haven't done a bad job at all, if they are trying to abscond with the wealth of this country. They are getting all the assets and then they'll decide what to do with them. QE2 is for them.

Read the latest posts in The Automatic Earth. I loved the Nominal Man.

I wish I could find it posted alone so I could have other people read it.

I think it's the best summation of our situation I've read yet.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

gosh, that blog has 3 times more traffic than peakoil! will read it later

Revi wrote:The elites haven't done a bad job at all, if they are trying to abscond with the wealth of this country. They are getting all the assets and then they'll decide what to do with them. QE2 is for them.

Abscond with them to Where exactly? This is a world wide financial collapse and there isn't another world to go to to spend their ill gotten gains.
I find it curious that many feel that the Elites or TPTB or "the people running things" Or "Corporate leadership" take your pick are trying to destroy the middle class and enslave the poor. The CEOs etc. need the middle class to be strong and vibrant and the poor to be not too poor because of all the names you can give to the people in these classes the most important one is Customer. Even a corporation that deals exclusively with the government needs a strong middle class in the long run as the middle class are the Taxpayersthat pay the bills so the government can place its next order.
If TPTB are destroying the middle class it certainly is not on purpose. How to stop them from doing it by accident while being mesmerized by quarterly balance sheets is another matter.

I agree with you VTsnowedin. It makes no sense to kill off the middle class, but I think it is happening. Those of us who are still afloat will be drained of what assets we have left paying for food, gas and oil eventually. That's why wood heat, gardens and electric cars are so important. Maple syrup is a commodity that will hold it's value as well. (and it's tasty)

Real estate is in trouble. The people who signed those mortgage papers were found out about thanks to a legal aid lawyer from Maine. As Maine goes, so goes the nation. It's a great story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/busin ... f=business

Personally I don't think there is a Cabal somewhere pulling the strings. There are people/institutions which benefit from this law, that loophole, a certain regulatory oversight (or oversight) and on and on. Just like there are regular people who benefited from RE appreciation and from the same lax standards everyone else did except the people left without a spot when the music stopped. Granted, the vested interests in a particular area will certainly work the angles as much as possible to their benefit.

But what it boils down to is, if you aren't careful you get gypped, it's just that simple.

I'm kind of a bleeding heart, I think gov needs to make sure everyone gets a fair shake, to some extent see to it that the powerful don't take advantage of the little guy and that we all have an equal ability to take it to the judge. But in the end it doesn't matter how many laws there are in place to protect you, if you don't understand what you are getting into, you have no business signing on the line. If you've never seen the stack of disclosures, endorsements, inspections and forms needed to complete a real estate deal in CA you may not understand the extent government goes to to try to keep people safe from themselves - and it just doesn't always work - obviously.

Back before the S&L Crisis people were taking out negative amortization, adjustable rate loans - the balance goes UP not DOWN for years but they were just happy as clams because they thought they'd never qualify for a home loan! Then a few years later they realized they couldn't make the payment and they owed more than the house was worth. It happened to several people we know.

And this time around too, I know at least two people who were in my opinion guilty of stupidity if not fraud but at the least were complicit in the whole scam. One person used the "stated Income" method, entering the amount he needed to earn (the amount the broker told him to) instead of what he did make; the other entered the amount of income he actually made on the application but when it came back from the broker the amount was higher and he signed anyway. Both are renters today.

It didn't take a big conspiracy to make the whole thing blow up (or crash dow) it just took a whole lot of people looking out for their own interests and wearing their rosy glasses 24/7. The pols had a good economy, stupid; the RE & finance & insurance industry was making a fortune; anybody involved in consumer goods from cars to pools to furniture to vacations was making big bucks; even the people who wound up with the shredded paper suspended their judgement just enough to believe that mortgages were 100% safe and housing prices would, for the first time in history, continue to rise forever - and of course the consumer was right at the center of the whole scam, willingly.

Actually, on second thought, maybe there is a cabal pulling the strings, it's all of us.

Oh, I think there's an obvious banker cabal that pretty well runs the world of finance in Europe and the US, but they aren't all-powerful, and they are finding that out now. Looks to me like they are getting pretty edsperate, too. The bad part is, we little folk are going to bear the brunt of their screw ups.

By that logic though, there might well be a cabal of evil corn farmers forcing us to buy Sugar Pops and drink Pepsi and drive E85. This years corn crop is worth $80 billion to the farmer and we know the farmer only sees maybe 10% of the profits so say corn is an $800 billion racket, plenty of justification for a cabal there I'm thinkin...

Pops wrote: we know the farmer only sees maybe 10% of the profits

That much?

Read this article about cotton and think for yourself: a ton of cotton is 3644 tons of water. There is an impending water crisis coming within a decade in Pakistan/india area, and all over the planet later on.
There is a 2-3 billion expense for the taxpayer to subsidize US cotton growers, otherwise it is unprofitable here and will take off pretty much 2/3ds of all cotton exports off the market.
cotton uses 16% of all world's pesticides and 25% of insecticides

http://ironrye.blogspot.com/2010/10/cot ... ypium.html

OH NO! A return to nylon shirts.

But seriously, all intensivly farmed crops use large quantities of water & chemicals to enhance yields.

when cotton was grown in the 1800's, did it require so much water ?

... though i guess that calculation would need to include the health & welfare of the slave workers who picked it & worked it. i.e. their water & food would become a cost of cotton production, the way petro-chemicals are now.

personally i think we did it best between the era of slavery & before the advent of globalization. back when Berkshire & Hathaway was literally a fabric mill.

pedalling_faster wrote:when cotton was grown in the 1800's, did it require so much water ?

... though i guess that calculation would need to include the health & welfare of the slave workers who picked it & worked it. i.e. their water & food would become a cost of cotton production, the way petro-chemicals are now.

Don't forget the actual cost of the slaves, which was ridiculously high, along with their high amortization costs. You havent heard all that noise from the media that Cotton finally broke its record civil war price-- at least nominally?
What I find to be really amazing is 2-3 billion from the Fed just to give China a better price for their imports. China buys more cotton than the rest of the world combined, according to the article

Also, I think you need something like a thousand tons of water to produce on ton of grains.

Any of you metal bugs have a price point when you'll sell some or all your silver/gold? I mean the price of both have gone through the roof and especially silver lately. So any thoughts? For silver would you sell at 50, 75, 100$ an oz? And how bout gold? 2000$, 3000, 5000$ an oz? Or never?

Anyways, silverbug here wondering...

Once my PM holdings reach an amount adequate to pay off my mortgage on the new house I'll start selling <$10K/month and applying it to principle on the mortgage. I'll sell gold first then silver.

My reasoning is that I'd like to end up with some emergency silver left over that I can just hold. I don't want to just hold it all because I suspect that the end game for the dollar will be a transfer of debts of individuals from the failed dollar to the new dollar at unfavorable terms.

As of today I need about 30% more in aggregate gain to start selling.

1 loaf of bread = $100

AgentR11 wrote:1 loaf of bread = $100

In Trinidad, one dollar buy
Papaya juice, banana pie
Six coconut, one female goat
An' plenty fish to fill de boat
One bushel bread, one barrel wine
An' all de town, she come to dine

But here is bad, one dollar buy
Cup of coffee, ham on rye

I think it depends on whether you need the money. I think fiat currency should be thought of like fresh fruit. You want some money to buy things, but it's not a store of value any more. Like fresh fruit it doesn't last too long before it goes bad.

sold our morgans and eagles this week; got hit with a horrific tax bill. Well, at least on the bright side, if the commodities markets tank, I won't be left holding the bag. On the other hand, with silver at 42, we had no problem unloading them at all. somebody out there doesn't think the silver run is over and is willing to put their cash on the line in support of that position

I don't have much. To me it's a bit like selling your parachute while sitting in a burning plane.